KETAKI CHITALE HAD just finished her lunch when a few policemen barged into her house on May 14. “The police came in, handcuffed me and asked me to accompany them without any explanation,” said Chitale, an actress and activist. She was not allowed to make any calls, not even to her parents who lived a few kilometres away from her rented apartment in Kalamboli, Navi Mumbai.
Her crime? She shared a post on Facebook the previous day, a poem on a fictional character holding a public office called Pawara. It had already been shared at least a hundred times and had some 4,000 reactions. About four hours after she shared it, an FIR was registered. In a span of 48 hours, 21 more FIRs were registered, her house was raided, and her phone and laptop were confiscated. She spent the next 41 days in jail.
The ordeal continued even after she got out on bail, as she was “misconstrued, misquoted and misunderstood”. Many news channels reported that she was molested by policemen, and while in prison. “I was not molested by the police at any point, neither inside the prison nor outside,” she said. “It was the mob that molested me while I was being taken from Kalamboli police station to the Thane police station. I was touched inappropriately and roughed up by the mob.”
Chitale’s lawyer, Yogesh Deshpande, alleged that it was “NCP workers who physically assaulted, slapped and molested her”. “They were wearing NCP IDs, they were all office bearers and gave interviews to the media later on, saying that they were on the lookout for her and were waiting for her to arrive at the police station,” he said. “These are the words of Aditi Nalawade, NCP’s MLC. We have that record with us. Despite Chitale filing a complaint against them, it was registered as a non-cognisable offence.”
Chitale is now with her parents, and she fears another arrest. Her father is a retired professor and her mother was a teacher. Her younger brother works in Singapore. She is barred from moving out of Maharashtra, she cannot access her email and she has to attend court proceedings and police interrogations almost on a daily basis.
During conversation, Chitale breaks into laughs and giggles and maintains a chirpy tone. “You might be tempted to think that I’m a psycho. But trust me, this is my coping mechanism,” she said. “Crying won’t right all the wrongs I have suffered. But the least I can do is laugh them out to find my own inner peace. I was not the first and the only public figure to share that post. I do not know why I have been singled out and made to suffer.” The poem is still online and being shared. In circulation since 2020, it is signed by a lawyer called Nitin Bhave, who is said to be on the run.
Just before she went into prison, Chitale had signed up for a bartending course. She was learning glass flaring and was about to enter a competition and display her projects when life took a wrong turn. “I have lost almost all my savings in defending my case, when there should have been no case in the first place,” she said. “I have lost on multiple acting projects and have no way of getting back because I don’t have my phone with me. Life has come to a standstill and it feels very depressing right now.”
Though “lonely and heartbreaking”, the prison life was not that bad. She started learning Spanish, devoured the books in the jail library, taught inmates a few subjects for their BA examinations and “learnt to value freedom we take for granted in everyday life”. She suffers from epilepsy and had four seizures in jail. “I was taken to the JJ Hospital against my will and without my knowledge for an EEG and was asked to take medicines even though I did not want to. I never took them,” she said.
The chief complainant, Swapnil Netke, is an office-bearer of the NCP from Kalwa in Thane. A complaint was registered under Sections 500 (punishment for defamation), 501 (printing matter known to be defamatory) and 153 (wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot). “The person who has been defamed hasn’t even come in front of the court, and under these sections this is a non-cognisable offence. Yet, she was arrested under Section 153A, which is ridiculous because the poem does not indicate or incite any enmity between any two groups,” said Deshpande.
“It goes against the very principle of justice,” said D. Sivanandhan, former DGP of Maharashtra Police, on Chitale’s arrest. “Most of these cases are carried out for extraneous reasons than otherwise. Arresting and putting her behind the bars was done on judicial supervision. So the judiciary could have acted wisely even if the police had taken the wrong course.”